Sustainable future

Updated on: Wednesday, July 21, 2010

IIFT’s Kolkata campus, as part of it Foundation Day celebration, organised a panel discussion on “Achieving Sustainable NGO-Corporate Partnership “on its Foundation Day on July 18.

Speaking on the occasion Dr K Rangarajan, centre head of the Kolkata campus of IIFT, remarked that the occasion emphasized the incumbent need to structure the social responsibility activities undertaken by corporate in today’s day and that the topic of discussion resonated with the values taught at IIFT and made the celebrations even more meaningful.

Dilith Castleton, Senior Manager Rural Services, Tata Steel, said that its corporate sustainability services’ mission is to create a favorable social environment to enable businesses. She stated that in the past 26 years NGOs have played a vital role because they possess the knowledge and understanding to reach the masses and also the professional skills of corporate could be utilised to conceptualize, organise and implement effectively the development initiatives of the NGO’s.

Reaffirming the idea, Subrata Paul, CEO, Bengal Aerotropolis, mentioned NGO’s are purely facilitators and real inclusive growth will only come when the corporate adopt and implement the enabling initiatives. He stressed that presently about a quarter of India’s population resides below the poverty line and with the economy slated to become the third largest in the next 30 years this creates a pressing need for inclusive growth.

Also commenting on the occasion, Dipankar Ghosh, former BBC correspondent, remarked that dependence on government for aid and enforceability of all efforts should be reduced and that the future managers must take out time to understand the mindset of people at the lower strata of society and see how the society is shaping up. Linking the contribution of corporates to society.

Swaroop Ghosh, Founder, Tomorrow’s Foundation opined that corporate philanthropy enunciates sharing the generated wealth with the people and we all need to think together to create a sustainable society.

Explaining the business dimension of Sustainability, Anindya Sengupta of PricewaterhouseCoopers said that it includes risk mitigation, cost reduction and revenue enhancement. He stated that the corporates believe that “Production is king and Distribution is God” and that a business-NGO partnership can provide leverage for private resources to be correctly channeled such that they meet social and environmental solutions using NGO’s reach to masses.

The panel discussion was followed with a cultural event. Apart from IIFT’s students displaying their talents, several prominent NGOs f1rom Kolkata participated in this event. The day ended on a high note with a price distribution ceremony for the winners of the talent show and painting competition and gave the start of NGO week at IIFT an appropriate start.

Sustainable future

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